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CHAPTER 21

Reign of Manasseh.1Manasseh was twelve years old when he became king, and he reigned fifty-five years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Hephzibah.

2He did what was evil in the LORD’s sight, following the abominable practices of the nations whom the LORD had dispossessed before the Israelites.
3He rebuilt the high places which Hezekiah his father had destroyed. He set up altars to Baal and also made an asherah, as Ahab, king of Israel, had done. He bowed down to the whole host of heaven and served them.a4He built altars in the house of the LORD, of which the LORD had said: In Jerusalem I will set my name.
5And he built altars for the whole host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the LORD.
6He immolated his child by fire. He practiced soothsaying and divination, and reintroduced the consulting of ghosts and spirits.

He did much evil in the LORD’s sight and provoked him to anger.b7The Asherah idol he had made, he placed in the LORD’s house, of which the LORD had said to David and to his son Solomon: In this house and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I shall set my name forever.c8I will no longer make Israel step out of the land I gave their ancestors, provided that they are careful to observe all I have commanded them and the entire law which Moses my servant enjoined upon them.
9But they did not listen.

Manasseh misled them into doing even greater evil than the nations the LORD had destroyed at the coming of the Israelites.
10Then the LORD spoke through his servants the prophets:
11“Because Manasseh, king of Judah, has practiced these abominations, and has done greater evil than all that was done by the Amorites before him, and has led Judah into sin by his idols,d12therefore, thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: I am about to bring such evil on Jerusalem and Judah that, when any hear of it, their ears shall ring:
13I will measure Jerusalem with the same cord as I did Samaria, and with the plummet I used for the house of Ahab. I will wipe Jerusalem clean as one wipes a dish, wiping it inside and out.e14I will cast off the survivors of my inheritance. I will deliver them into enemy hands, to become prey and booty for all their enemies,
15because they have done what is evil in my sight and provoked me from the day their ancestors came forth from Egypt until this very day.”
16Manasseh shed so much innocent blood that it filled the length and breadth of Jerusalem, in addition to the sin he caused Judah to commit by doing what was evil in the LORD’s sight.

17The rest of the acts of Manasseh, with all that he did and the sin he committed, are recorded in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah.
18Manasseh rested with his ancestors; he was buried in his palace garden, the garden of Uzza, and his son Amon succeeded him as king.

Reign of Amon.19Amon was twenty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned two years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Meshullemeth, daughter of Haruz, from Jotbah.

20He did what was evil in the LORD’s sight, as his father Manasseh had done.
21He walked in all the ways of his father; he served the idols his father had served, and bowed down to them.
22He abandoned the LORD, the God of his ancestors, and did not walk in the way of the LORD.

23Officials of Amon plotted against him and killed the king in his palace,
24but the people of the land* then slew all who had plotted against King Amon, and the people of the land made his son Josiah king in his stead.
25The rest of the acts of Amon, which he did, are recorded in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah.
26He was buried in his own grave in the garden of Uzza, and his son Josiah succeeded him as king.

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